Social services failed to recognise the risk posed by a mentally ill woman who killed her two children after being allowed unsupervised access, an inquiry has found.

Vivian Gamor was acting increasingly strangely towards her children before she bludgeoned 10-year-old Antoine with a claw hammer and suffocated daughter Kenniece, three, with cling film in January last year.

Up to 500,000 local government workers walked out yesterday in the biggest strike yet against Gordon Brown’s pay restraint policy, closing schools, sports centres and museums and disrupting refuse and recycling collections across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Councils have been given insufficient money by the government to meet the cost of dealing with a rising tide of migrant workers, MPs complained on Wednesday.

A report by the communities and local government select committee said plans by ministers to impose a levy on immigrants to pay for extra public services would be “a drop in the ocean in comparison to the needs of local government”.

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